CIRCUS RETURNS TO TOWN

Trump’s Inauguration Program Leaked–and It’s Less MAGA Than Expected

The Daily Beast has obtained a program for Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 swearing-in ceremony.

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It sounds like the start of a joke... an imam, a Catholic bishop, a rabbi, and a MAGA televangelist.

All four will give prayers at the inaugural swearing-in ceremony next Monday of Donald John Trump and JD Vance, according to a program obtained by the Daily Beast.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will administer the oath of office to Vance, his fellow Yale Law School graduate. The chief justice, John Roberts, per custom, will swear in Trump.

The archbishop of New York, Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan, together with nepo-son evangelist Reverend Franklin Graham, will deliver the invocation.

Delivering the benediction at the end of the service on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20: Yeshiva University President and Rabbi Ari Berman; Imam Husham Al-Husainy; Senior Pastor Lorenzo Sewell of Detroit; and the Reverend Father Frank Mann of Brooklyn.

According to his church’s website, Sewell grew up in an abusive home and “became heavily involved in drugs and drug dealing, ultimately becoming a gang leader” before he became a pastor.

Al-Husainy is the controversial leader of an Islamic center in Dearborn, Michigan, who has refused to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

Mainline protestants don’t appear to get representation at the Trump inauguration.

Of the 13 individuals whose names appear in the inaugural ceremony program, just two of them are women, including country star Carrie Underwood, who will sing “America the Beautiful” alongside the Armed Forces Chorus and the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club.

Vocalist Christopher Macchio will sing the National Anthem.

The only other woman to play a role in Trump’s inaugural ceremony is Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who chairs the Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. Klobuchar once joked that Melania Trump displaced her as the most famous Slovenian-American.

A Marine will escort the incoming first lady. She and her husband are known as big fans of the Marines.

During Trump’s first inaugural ceremony on Jan. 20, 2017, the first lady was was escorted by Marine Infantry Officer Ian Johnston. Next Monday, another Marine captain from Marine Barracks, also known as “8th and I,” will do the honors.

In fact, the only band to appear on Monday’s inaugural program is the United States Marine Band, known as “The President’s Own.”

The Marine Band’s lead French horn player, Gunnery Sergeant Cecilia Kozlowski, served as a stand-in for Melania Trump during Sunday’s rehearsal at the U.S. Capitol. (She also played horn at the late President Jimmy Carter’s funeral at the National Cathedral last week.)

Notably, the program makes no mention of the U.S. Army.

Perhaps the incoming 47th president still harbors ill will toward retired Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who called Trump a “total fascist” and the “most dangerous person to this country.”

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Mary Ann AkersWashington Bureau Chief

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